On Saturday, NPR’s news program All Things Considered discussed U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the reaction of the activist community.
From President Obama on down, the administration is stacked with officials who have talked tough about ending what they have termed “genocide” in the Darfur region of Sudan. That made it all the more surprising this week when the administration’s special envoy suggested holding out new carrots for Khartoum.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration suggested it was time to take Sudan off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that has led to a whole series of sanctions.
However, Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, urged caution in dealing with the government in Khartoum:
“[The Sudanese] took this incredibly cruel and callous step of expelling humanitarian organizations in March and the process that we’ve mostly seen since then is them gradually easing up on that,” he says. “But it was a crisis they created themselves, and all we are doing is expending a lot of effort to get back to a status quo that was unacceptable and unsustainable in the first place.”
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Tags: Audio, Congress, Darfur Policy, Jerry Fowler, Save Darfur, Scott Gration, Sudan Policy Review
